I only got to page 80. There just wasn’t enough meat to hold me. By meat I mean character development and descriptive details. Usually you see less of that in YA books but this one was just bare bones, and thin bones at that. No real understanding of who the character is, and the descriptions of the individual events weren’t drawn well enough to hold my interest until the character really began to develop. And by page 80, one of those things should be well enough drawn to pull readers forward…that wasn’t the case here.
1 star.

A debut YA novel that is exceptional in so many ways. When Gemma is kidnapped while traveling with her parents, she is swept from England to the Australian outback by a man who has stalked her for years. The novel is written as an extensive letter crafted by Gemma to her kidnapper, and is especially thoughtful, poignant, and compelling perhaps because of the letter’s sharp and cutting intimacy.
Although Gemma first hates both her kidnapper Ty and the outback, she slowly warms to both. Part of this is through the wearing down of her defenses that are so typical among kidnap victims (even the narrative discusses the Stockholm effect wherein victims begin to identify with their captors). More importantly, though, this wearing away comes from Gemma’s reflections on her situation and her own past.
The outback offers beauty to those who look. I know this personally because I spent six months camping alone in the outback; as a woman, everyone thought I was crazy or bold to the point of suicidal. But the journey was spiritual, and much of Gemma’s journey resonates with my own lessons.
Too, Gemma considers how she never really appreciated her parents or their love when she had everything. Stripped away from them, she recognizes that she was blind to what they had to offer. As she explores both the beauty of the outback and the very real pain Ty suffered before he began to stalk her, she matures in a way few people will unless they too suffer intense trauma.
This novel has much to offer. From the way it is written to the storyline itself, it’s well worth the time for YA and adult readers alike.
5 stars!
For more on the outback and its depth, try Message Stick, a novel that won two national awards, or Seven Sisters: Spiritual Messages from Aboriginal Australia, which pairs Aboriginal dreamtime tales with essays on what these ancient stories can teach modern people.

By Kate Morton.
This book was a total surprise to me. I really don’t go for historical fiction that meanders about with too much emphasis on the tawdry social fights that go on between the upstairs/downstairs set.
This work entirely upset my expectations. I was more than happy to read further and further into this work. Some other reviewers have dinged it for poor storytelling…I believe they are dissatisfied with the pacing. The pace is appropriate for this story, and pays off very well for the reader who wants to dive deep into a character’s nuances.
That was the most enjoyable part of this work. The twists at the end weren’t so surprising to me but as an author, that’s not unusual. Besides, this work isn’t really read for it’s twists. It’s read for the nuances and subtle (and yes, often not-so-subtle) impacts into various lives of different events.
I truly, truly liked this novel. So much so that I went right away to another of the same author’s books. Very well done and worth the time to slow down your reading pace and walk with these people.
4 stars!

By Robert Goolrick.
I read this right after finishing Goolrick’s first book, A Reliable Wife. This one was just as well written. Very nuanced characters, none of whom are perfect and all of whom are reaching for something more in their lives. The fact that the something more is really just a little happiness makes it all the more compelling.
The event that ends the story of the two lovers wasn’t entirely to my liking. Not because I don’t like what happened; I’m just not sure it was the right move for these characters. Perhaps with more reflection on the small town community, which can be overly familiar, I will change my mind. But the final event was abrupt in terms of storytelling. Then again, violence of this type always is abrupt, so perhaps I was too influenced by the pace of the story to be prepared for the final event.
At any rate, another excellent novel from Goolrick.
4 stars!

This middle-grade novel is a fun romp with the love of family and responsibility thrown in. After the country’s population must decide whether they will live inside or outside protective, regimented walls that will control resources, Maggie and her family scrounge for their daily needs outside the Bubble Cities. Life is tough but full with two parents who love her and a special-needs younger brother who delights her and who is her best companion.
But all is not well. Maggie’s father, for one, spends increasingly longer periods with the ghostly humans who are addicted to a sludge-like compound they brew out of leftover chemicals. The corporate conglomerate that grows genetically enhanced corn on much of the good soil outside the cities prevents the outsiders from benefiting from the acres of food. When Maggie comes home to find her family gone and their house ransacked, she must untangle the secrets her parents have hidden from her all her life.
Plenty of action runs throughout this book and the stakes are real. Maggie must grow up quickly, and rounds up her neighbors to help. But truly the only person who can save her family is Maggie herself. She sets off on a cross-country adventure that ends with her facing down nothing less than the government of the bubble cities.
My only complaint with this story was how some information was worked into the text. Dialog was used to convey information that might “educate” readers on various topics, many of which weren’t related to the story or characters. I was greatly turned off by this kind of thing when I was a young reader and I can’t imagine that today’s young readers are much different. But that didn’t take too much away from the plot so the rating here is still high.
This book was received through a giveaway on Literary Rambles. The blog runs frequent giveaways for a variety of books publishers provide the blog as ARCs. Check them out today at LiteraryRambles.com.
5 stars for the book and Literary Rambles!

I gave this a try. I approached it because it is written from the viewpoint of a woman who is degenerating, which is unusual for fiction dealing with this ailment. I also was very interested in the author’s approach, to show her degenerating slowly after having a successful career based on her ability to work with very high concepts.
The writing has weaknesses in areas that I just can’t tolerate. The use of dialog to provide information that would be better provided in narrative form is the primary issue. Using dialog to dump data really slows the pace, and it takes away from the internal development of individual characters. I found this too much of an issue to move beyond and so stopped reading after a short time.
1 star.

Fantastic story. This book follows a woman’s life from her youth when she used clothes to define an identity she couldn’t otherwise develop through her efforts to locate the past that was hidden from her by her parents. A great introspective work on what people find acceptable, why they might reject their relatives, and who they turn out to be themselves in the end.
The writing is lovely, spare yet with a style that touches on the emotions and turmoil of this woman at different life stages. And she does find herself in the end through some very interesting moves that force her parents to confront what they hid for so long.
5 stars!

Read about 30 pages but wasn’t impressed with the writing or the character development. It was well written in terms of how words are laid out on the page but there wasn’t really much compelling development of the characters. That’s a critical flaw in the opening pages.
I suppose if you like stories that focus on a family’s history you might enjoy this. But I didn’t find enough to hold me long.
In some ways, I’m surprised it won an award…and in others I’m not surprised. Literary contests can pick works that meander or where nothing happens, holding the prose over the story or what it might provide for a reader in terms of messaging or experience. So perhaps you have to read the first 100 pages before things really come clear.
1 star.

By Erwin Mortier
This work is and isn’t about World War I. Helena, writing journal after journal as an elderly woman cared for by one harsh homecare nurse and one loving homecare nurse, first shows readers what her life has become. Then we see how life was before the war…comfortable, pleasant, and in many ways a mirror image of the nurturing kindness the elderly Helena receives from the kind caregiver.
Not until long into the book does Helena finally turn to the wartime events. This is in part because the visitation of the fighting on her country was so terrible, she has difficulty coming to terms with it even at this late date. But she is driven to do so…not because she believes the journals will leave some lasting legacy; in fact, she tells the caretaker to distribute them at whim, and shows herself to be as unattached to them as falling leaves in the wind.
Really, she is writing for herself. She needs to retrieve from the mud that swallowed so many men dead and alive some understanding of what this monster was and how it changed her and her country. The sweep is epic yet is told from such a close and intimate understanding of one woman’s life that readers cannot help but feel the horror Helena had as a witness.
Then, at the end, we see that Helena’s words have had a broader impact beyond her life. The simple words of her caregiver, relaying her own family’s story of loss, resonates in a few brief pages with everything Helena has needed hundreds of pages to convey through her own efforts.
What shining beauty is in her words.
I was given an ARC (digital) by the publisher to review.
Want more fiction like this? Try Message Stick. A biracial man only faces his hidden past when forced by mysterious events surrounding the disappearance of his best friend.

I got up to page 138 with this. The first chapter was compelling enough to keep me interested; the author presents three viewpoints here, all with their own backstories.
Quickly, however, I found two things very annoying. First, the author talks down to the YA reader. Second, although this is set in some future time, the cultural references were all of today’s moment…and actually even outdated for today. So, even though the characters admitted using old cultural references, it didn’t come off well. Because of these two issues, it really sounded like an adult author trying too hard to reach the teen reader…and that’s a big turnoff.
Finally, as the pages turned, the author intruded more and more into the narrative and dialog. By the time I stopped reading, it felt like he was preparing to deliver a “big message,” which is also a turnoff. Not that fiction can’t deliver messages; they just need to be handled with a lighter touch.
2 stars.

Well, I gave this one a go. I enjoyed the concept but the way the author treated the overarching theme ended up drowning in dialog.
I don’t fault the author for this. It was pretty common to the time it was written to use didactic dialog to convey big chunks of information. So he was right in line with his times. I just wasn’t into reading this kind of book at this time.
I might return to it later and read the entire thing because I found the way he handled the narrative quite compelling. He was a brilliant writer, and is worth the effort. Just not this month!
3 stars.